


By Any Other Name

by jenna_thorn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1469989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A codename is an identity, not identification. Phil and Nick and Clint and Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Name

**Marcus Johnson:**

They sat back to back on a damp concrete floor, not waiting so much as poised for action. The buckles and stiff ridge of the kidney protection in Nick’s getup pressed through the wool of his own suit. 

“Two years,” Nick said. _No,_ Phil thought. _142 seconds. Give or take seven._ He glanced to the side and frowned. Nick said, “Today is two years since Detroit.”

Phil blinked. “You mean two years since you disappeared and I had to resort to a tracker to find your kidnapped ass.”

“All’s well that ends well, Agent Coulson.”

Phil grinned. “Much ado about nothing, Agent Fury,” he responded, stressing the name. Nick smirked with only an echo of Marcus’s easy smile. Sometimes Phil missed that smile. Had it really been two years since Marc – Nick had … Since all that mess had happened? 

Phil’s watch buzzed and Nick held up his fingers in an unnecessary countdown. As the explosions ripped through the south end of the building, they slipped out of the room. 

**Hawkeye:**

The holding cell had that smell specific to all holding cells, anger and fear and industrial cleaners. He nodded to the sheriff who glanced to the side and shook his head as he walked away. The young man sat sideways in the metal chair, his unbandaged arm handcuffed to the ring in the middle of the bolted table. 

Phil carefully placed the bottle of water within reach, then settled into the chair opposite, flipping through the manila folder in his hands as the man ran his grimy thumb along the uncracked cap of the bottle. He twisted it off one handed and drank the bottle down without pausing. Phil closed the file and folded his hands over it. After a moment, the man before him met his eye. 

“You were captured more easily than we expected, Mr. Barton.” Phil tried to reconcile two years of reports of an invisible sniper making impossible shots with this man before him, who stayed to render aid while his compatriots fled. 

“Had to stop and tie my shoelaces.”

“You’ll find the orange jumpsuit and terrycloth slippers of prison a welcome simplicity, then,” Phil calmly responded. Barton twitched and the plastic bottle popped under his thumb. He covered by crinkling the whole of it in one still-dirty hand. 

Phil pushed forward the top sheets in the file onto the table. “These are the current charges against you.” He slid the other pages out of the folder. “These are the cases I think you can shed some light on. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated by law enforcement and given your age –“

“Fuck you.”

“You aren’t my type, kid.” Phil dropped the genial act and leaned forward. “It may come as a surprise to you, but I am trying to help you.”

“Yeah, bullshit. What’s in it for you?”

“Co-operate and you’ll find out.” Phil leaned back, radiating patience and Barton frowned. He drew one page toward him with a fingertip. 

“What, you just think you’re smarter than me --”

“No,” Phil interrupted.

“So I sh … what?”

Phil leaned back against the unyielding metal chair. “I do not have any reason whatsoever to believe that I’m smarter than you are.”

“Says the man wearing the suit,” Barton sneered.

“I am obviously better dressed than you.” The kid in front of him snorted and Phil continued, “Also, better trained, better paid, and better fed.” Barton blinked again and Phil added that to his list of tells. He wanted to play poker with this guy before Hancock got to him and trained him out of them. “But I would not presume to judge your intelligence. Yet.”

Barton pushed the paper around the table, smearing it with fingerprints. “This is where I’m supposed to prove I’m not a dumbass by believing everything that you say and spilling my guts, right? Rolling on my br …. Rolling on the people I work with, that’s not so smart. ”

“This is where you prove you’re not a dumbass by reading the list of charges, remembering that the people you are protecting left you wounded as they fled enforcement, and making a considered albeit minimally informed decision about your career options.” 

Barton stared at the paper in front of him, but Phil had seen him shoot; he knew he was being watched. “You’re telling me that pulling a bank job isn’t really a career in finance?”

Phil rewarded the joke with a smile, then tapped the paper. “Mr. Barton.”

 

**Black Widow:**

Inversion and reverse coloring, white for heat and black for cold and the thermal imager on the scope didn’t show details or surfaces. Probably for the best, Phil thought. Neither of them were wearing their surfaces tonight. He lay flat on a gritty rooftop, the tripod of his weapon stable against his forearms, while Barton, freshly shaved, wearing a suit from wardrobe and Phil’s cologne, ducked his head and smiled and pretended he was a junior officer of a mid-sized company with aspirations of global influence rather than being a junior officer of a hidden agency with invisible global influence. The ring on Barton’s pinky tapped against the glass, silent to the hidden microphone, but a flutter of distraction on the scope, cooler than his hand, warmer than the glass. 

Barton leaned backward against the balcony, presenting his profile to Phil, then tilted his head. The heavy drapery went still and Phil exhaled. Phil shifted the rifle, deliberately relaxing his shoulders, his eye never wavering until Barton rubbed his left ear. 

“Transfer made,” Barton said and Phil blinked. 

“No shot, I repeat, no target.”

“Yeah, no kidding. She’s good.”

“We’re better,” Blake, on the ground muttered. Barton glanced up, directly at Phil, and shrugged, but he didn’t say anything. “Pack it up,” Blake called, too loud for the sensitive comms, his frustration evident. “We’ll get her eventually. Fucking KGB…”

“Red Room,” Phil corrected without thinking. 

**Codename: Black Widow -- Known Aliases, see Attachment G**

“Do you have the shot?”

“Yes, but …”

“But what, Barton?”

“I have a target. You don’t think that’s off?”

“Given who you are and what you do? No, no I really don’t.”

“Anyone could make this … okay, yeah, but we’ve got five other snipers who could make this.”

“Six.”

“Johnson’s not as good in the field as he is on the range, sir.”

“Wilson.”

“Elevation.”

“Fine, five. Your point?”

“She’s standing there.”

“Are you compromised?”

“No, I don’t think she sees me, she’s just … standing. She’s got her eyes closed and … .”

“Barton, take th--.”

“Coulson, wait. Please. Sir.”

Seconds passed. “What am I waiting for, Barton?”

Barton, now on the ground, passed the edge of the building between Phil and the sniper’s nest at a half-jog. “Would you go get my rig, sir? I’m gonna go talk to a pretty girl.” 

“I’m one of the five, you know.”

Barton glanced back at him, but didn’t break stride. “”S’why you’re my choice as wingman, sir.”

**Romanov and Barton:**

The slate tiles typical of the region cut into his palms as Phil hauled himself over the eaves and walked to where they sat, legs hanging off the roof, watching the sunrise. They each held a tourist bright travel mug and there was a third between them. For him. He lowered himself carefully to the roof, sitting behind them rather than tempting fate or pigeons by scooting up to the edge. Barton handed him the third travel mug and Phil raised it to his lips, only to blink at the smell.

“Vodka?”

“You could think of it as Irish coffee.”

Phil sniffed at the mug again. “With no Irish and no coffee.”

Romanov, staring north, said to the sky, “He drank all the coffee.”

“And we didn’t have any whiskey,” Barton said as he shifted one leg up onto the slate to face them, turning away from sunrise over the ocean.

Phil held the mug in his hand, the bright green cartoon animal lurid in the shifting light of the rising sun. He sipped, rolling the alcohol over his tongue, and he could see Barton smile. 

“Something funny?” 

Barton gestured with his mug. “Nah, just thinking that Natasha’s right.”

“I’m always right,” she said. 

“Certainly seems so,” Phil nodded. He wondered, for a moment, just what she was right about his time, and he sipped his vodka again. 

The dark grey of the sky gave way to light grey, the sun hidden behind scudding clouds though the air was warm, and they sat together in silence as the world turned under them.


End file.
